


Set Alight

by wirewrappedlily



Series: Afire Love [6]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Fluff and Fun, James doesn't like not wearing a suit out of the hosue, M/M, a day off for our intrepid heroes, but there you have it, it's highly impractical, paint war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 09:55:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2146401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wirewrappedlily/pseuds/wirewrappedlily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We ought to visit them more often, James." </p><p>"If you actually got the hours Eve promised you, we might be able to." James replied teasingly, holding the door open for Q and grinning as he stole a kiss on his way past. </p><p>"Oh, please, like it's me keeping him there!" Eve protested, laughing. Dressed down in clothes that looked not nearly as ratty as Q's but far more appropriate than James's, Eve grinned as she swaggered towards them, pecking a kiss to Q's cheek. "I'm here to keep an eye on Alec and Jasmine. The two of them put together is actually almost as frightening as the two of you." </p><p>Jasmine let out a shrill 'HA!' from deeper in the house, "That is a right lie, boss! You are the evil overlord: I know not of your greatness!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Set Alight

"You are in completely the wrong clothes for this occasion, James." Q couldn't help laughing. 

Putting on a smirk that reminded Q of a naughty schoolboy, James shrugged the lines of his white suit clean, the perriwinkle blue shirt underneath it bringing out his tan and his eyes gorgeously. 

"This is painting. It's throwing paint at walls and people and popping balloons full of paint over people's heads. That is a gorgeous linen suit. _Why_?" 

"I never liked this suit." James laughed. 

"You didn't own it until last week." Q narrowed his eyes, unimpressed and tired-looking. 

"Just get in the car, pup." 

"We can't be taking the Jaguar, James. It'll get covered in paint." 

James snorted, catching Q's wrist and dragging him from the project on his workbench, calling back to Win to keep an eye on the workshop for them, practically skipping down the short staircase to take them to street level, opening Q's door for him with a bow, looking every inch devilish. 

"Did you take a harder hit to the head than I thought?" 

"No." James laughed lightly, crossing over to the driver's side. 

"You are aware we're going to see Hope and the kids, right? And that your name is James Bond? It's 2014? I'm your Quartermaster at MI6, you were discharged from the Navy in--" 

"Your name is Bastian Gabriel Kelly. You have a soft spot for poetry and getting your hair pet. Your left eyelid twitches when you're upset, and you make the single most obscene sound to have ever graced my ears when I open you with my tongue. My head is fine." 

"You are the idiot that called a collapsed lung a minor injury." 

"Q," James was laughing far more easily than Q had ever known him to before. There was a lightness to him that made Q want to throw any semblance of discipline away in the wind. 

"I ask because I care!" Q protested through giggles, and James sighed, unable to wipe his grin away. 

"Get in the car, you little shit, before I come back over there and put you in the car." James mockingly growled, the act completely ruined with his laughter. 

It had been almost a year since James Bond had retired from MI6. He was mostly healed; his left hand only bothering him when the weather took a fast turn, and his right knee creaky in the mornings. Q was scheduled to be with MI6 for a five-day week, and the only exception he made to that rule was when one of his agents really needed him, or when James had managed to snag the offer of teaching a training seminar for the new recruits. 

He was still the best the agency had: he still kept himself in peak physical condition and could be brought out of retirement for the occasional, covert escort op or an assassination on home soil that needed someone more apt to be able to disappear himself than MI5 could provide. 

But James had taken to retired life with a surprising ease, considering the way he regularly tried to kill himself should anything else have stood in his way to going on-mission. 

James wrapped his hand around Q's as Q took control of the gearshift, shifting for him easily as James drove, just to give his left hand the extra help it sometimes needed. Leaning over the gearshift to kiss the corner of James's mouth, Q smiled to himself. "Alec begged me to ask that you stop his toaster from spitting everything he puts into it halfway across the room."

"I consider myself asked. Request denied." Q laughed, "He bet me I couldn't...so I did." 

James snorted, "I told him he had to have done something that made him deserve it." 

Q grinned, looking young and gorgeous on the supple leather, his hair a riot of curls and his ancient, worn jeans torn through at the knees. James was so in love with him it hurt, and he couldn't help but weave their fingers together on the gearshift. 

"I thought I'd miss it." James muttered suddenly, and Q's insurmountable attention was snapped into such total focus that there was nothing that would slide past him in the words that came next, "Not as badly as I missed you. I don't, though. If anything, I wish I'd left soon enough that I'm not quite so broken now. That I'd left when I fell into you." 

"You're not broken...just...worn-in." 

James snorted, and Q grinned, "Like an old shoe." 

"You're not broken. You break for no one." Q murmured, his voice going soft and deep as he rubbed the backs of his fingers against James's jaw, "You're the strongest man I've ever met, and I couldn't have fallen for anyone less." 

James smiled, "I think it's you that makes me strong, Bastian. I doubt I'd've survived retirement without you." 

Q laughed, "You would've gotten there." 

"Thank you for the vote of confidence." James laughed, parking the car down the street from the house the James Kelly Foundation had bought the runaways that had helped them save London from a terrorist causing power surges and chaos to find Q and take him out. Curling his hand around Q's, James brought it to his lips, smiling against the scars he'd acquired from tinkering. "Let's go ruin this suit." 

Q threw his head back, laughing. James pulled him in, kissing him soundly as Q practically skipped down the sidewalk for his excitement. 

"Is it the chance to ruin the suit, or seeing Hope and Micro again that has you so happy?" James laughed at him, overjoyed to see Q so glowingly happy. 

"Both. Definitely both." Q giggled, his nose wrinkling. James laughed, his heart lighter than he'd ever felt before, "We ought to visit them more often, James." 

"If you actually got the hours Eve promised you, we might be able to." James replied teasingly, holding the door open for Q and grinning as he stole a kiss on his way past. 

"Oh, please, like it's me keeping him there!" Eve protested, laughing. Dressed down in clothes that looked not nearly as ratty as Q's but far more appropriate than James's, Eve grinned as she swaggered towards them, pecking a kiss to Q's cheek. "I'm here to keep an eye on Alec and Jasmine. The two of them put together is actually almost as frightening as the two of you." 

Jasmine let out a shrill 'HA!' from deeper in the house, "That is a right lie, boss! You are the evil overlord: I know not of your greatness!" 

James snorted, shaking his head, "When _did_ you become the evil overlord?" 

"Shortly after Eve decided that we were the minions." Jasmine replied, sighing as she walked in, hugging Q and planting a kiss on James's cheek. "Alright, you two are late, I'm not going to let myself even start to think about why you two would be late, but let's go join the fun before Alec manages to set up a paint bucket to tip like that old bucket-over-the-door prank. Because we all know he would." 

James looked at Q with a shrug that made a mockery of innocence, "He would." 

Q slung an arm around Jasmine's shoulders, pulling them both towards the sounds of shrieking, laughter, and loud music. "Hope! What have I told you about listening to 006?" 

Alec and Hope had frozen in place like mice caught as the light flicked on, and James snorted at them, "Eve, you've completely bollocksed up your job of keeping Alec from corrupting the youth." 

"Oh, bite me, old man!" Alec barked a laugh. "Eve is only one woman." 

James laughed at how familiar the defense felt; his own defense of Q ringing in his memory as Alec leaped down from his perch, bringing the paint down on the heads of the very kids who'd been helping him set it up. James cocked a brow at the incensed gathering of youths, looking back at Alec with something akin to regret. 

"You're not going to back me up on this at all, are you, you wanker?" Alec read in his eyes, and James just shook his head, a look of pity in his gaze. 

"You have literally no one but yourself to blame," Q laughed at him, the refusal to help clear on his features, too. 

"Well, fuckstockings." Alec laughed, turning to the kids and holding his hands up, "I accept my punishment." James was fully aware that he'd positioned himself between the kids and the clean adults, and knew, too, that Q and Eve were tactically allowing this to really get into the fun of the day. James, however, was not going to quietly go into the paint-splattered night. 

With a laughing roar, James pushed Alec forward into the wave of paint headed for him, grabbing Q as he did and using Q as a body shield, laughing the whole way as he went for weapons of his own. 

Q yelled at him like he hadn't seen that coming, twisting and pressing himself messily against James's white suit, smearing pink paint over his blue shirt and grinning like the devil as he did. Eve and Hope let out a battlecry, and Alec let out an undignified sound of shock and dread, falling under their attack simply because Hope and Eve were the two women not to stand against if it could be helped. "Jasmine!" Q yelled out, and in almost-perfect unison, they splashed out two buckets of paint, with James standing perfectly in the middle of the trajectory. James yelled, and Q gave a squeal unlike any anyone but James had ever heard him make as James simply picked him up around the waist and threw him over James's broad shoulder, essentially tossing him down into the path of the kids' myriad of paint streams, coating him in a rainbow. 

With an indignant shout, Jasmine leapt on James's back, twisting and managing to bring him down in a way that no one had been able to since he'd had a run-in with a highly-trained Yakuza assassin who'd spent most of her childhood in martial arts, ballet, and gymnastics training. That Jasmine ended up on her feet when she landed was a testament in no small part to how direly James had started underestimating the boffins and how well they were trained. 

Planted face-first into the slick of paint that had already been flung, James groaned as he rolled, snagging Q's ankle as the man tried to get up and fight back, only to yank him off his precarious balance and slide him down until James had settled his body in a lovely spread over Q's chest, trapping him there. 

Q cocked a brow at him, pursing his lips, "So much for no manhandling outside of the bedroom, 007." Q commented dryly, and James laughed, ducking his well-painted face to nuzzle against the one place Q seemed to have avoided colouring just yet: his gorgeous, alabaster neck. James felt Q's skin grow wonderfully warm under his mouth, a flush spreading deliciously over his features as he squirmed under James's ministrations. James let the sounds of the paint-battle fade around them, focusing instead on Q and how perfectly they fit together. "Did my eyes deceive me, or did Jasmine take you down with that scissor-kick leg thingy?" 

James burst into laughter against Q's neck, "So it's not all of the boffins I need to worry about being trained enough to kill me: just Jasmine? 'Scissor-kick leg thingy'..." James mocked, shaking his head in a teasing disappointment.

"If you know its technical term, by all means," Q invited with a touch of ire in his voice, eyes narrowed and steely. James grinned like a caught schoolboy who knew he wouldn't get in trouble, and Q's expression couldn't help softening, turning fond and lovely as he reached up and carded his hand through James's paint-slick hair, bringing their mouths together in a quick, deliriously content kiss, Q's toes curling for how good it felt to simply be there. 

"Ew!" Alec shouted, and they broke apart, making horrified and indignant noises as a wave of paint crashed over them. James rolled off of Q and they both sprang up, Q going for his madly giggling subordinate while James slid across the slick of paint, stirring up a small wave and knocking Alec off his feet in the process. 

When they began to run out of paint, Q was in a tangle of limbs with Jasmine, Micro, Eve, and Twitch, and someone's elbows were dangerously close to cutting off at least two oxygen supplies. 

James was laughing almost too hard to pick them out and stand them up, reaching for Q last with a softness in his eyes that made Q's heart squeeze with how much he loved the man offering his hand down to him. Q got to his feet only to have James take a knee in front of him, still holding his hand as James, paint-soaked and gorgeous James--grinned up at him. 

"Oh, fuck me..." Q breathed, his eyes going wide, "You--But...No way. No fucking way." 

"Will you..." 

"James, I'm not kidding--" 

"Bastian Gabriel Kelly--" 

"--I've died. Or I've lost my fucking mind. Someone knocked me out with a paint can. I'm daydreaming in school and none of this has actually happened..." 

"--marry me?" James reached into a pocket inside his jacket, flicking open a little black box to reveal matching bands. 

Q's hand tightened so hard on James's that James had to suppress a wince, staring up at Q with unrelenting ice-blue eyes. "You're not taking the piss?" 

"I'd tear his insides out through his arse if he was." Eve piped up, sounding more amazed than Q did, though that was about as amazed as Q felt. 

James threw a look at her, "Of fucking course I'm not, the both of you! Bastian, I'm old and out of the business and I've gotten somewhere I never thought I'd be. Here. With you. Wanting to marry you and live out the rest of my days with you: I want Tanner calling you at five in the morning and the opportunity to pull you out of a luncheon with the PM if you text me you're too bored. I want you to be Bastian Bond. Or I could be James Kelly. Or we could be the Bond-Kellys. I don't care. I just want you." 

"James, for god's sake, get off your knee." Q managed through nearly-unmoving lips, tears brimming in his eyes. 

James swallowed: that was not what he wanted to hear; this was not what he wanted to see. He'd expected, stupidly, he realized, was for Q to throw himself in James's arms and kiss him within an inch of his life, screaming his 'yes' through the damn city. Q's pale features, his brimming eyes, this was not what fairytales were made of; he was staring into the decision that would undoubtedly break his heart. 

Of course, James wouldn't let that show. He wouldn't let it play on his face, nor would he allow himself to be any different in the way he touched Q. If Q didn't want him permanently, James could hardly blame him; he was old, he was retired, and before long, he'd be too old to keep even a piffling amount of the genius's attention. 

But until then, he'd let himself have what he'd just come so close to making himself lose-- 

"Of fucking course I'll marry you, James, now stand the fuck up and let me kiss you until I'm dizzy with it." Q whispered harshly, tears brimming over as he grinned impishly, tugging lightly at James's hands to urge him up. James got to his feet, taking Q in his arms and losing himself in the kiss; pressing Q's lean body into his own and letting himself get dizzy with it as well. "You fucking tool, this is why you wore the suit, isn't it?" 

James was laughing at the mouth on his lover whenever he was taken by surprise by something, hugging him tightly. 

"I would've asked soon, too, you know." Q murmured, "'S why I thought you might be taking the piss: I've been trying to design a set of bands for us both, I figured you'd caught sight of the sketches somehow." 

James kissed his forehead, "No. Not taking the piss. And I would love to see those sketches, Q. I got these with engraving in mind." 

Q smiled, simple and beautiful as he tipped his head up, pulling James into another soft kiss as the man slid the band in place on his finger, Eve snapping a photo and denying any and all evidence that there were any tears in her eyes. Everyone burst into a round of cheering for them, and Q knew this look of stupid, lovely joy wouldn't fade from his features any time soon.

**Author's Note:**

> An endless thanks to everyone who's been keeping up with the series, giving kudos, and commenting: I wouldn't still be writing without people like you. 
> 
> This is not the end of the series quite yet, but I may not be able to post and update the next installment as frequently as I have been doing, so I'm going to try to thrash it out in its entirety before I begin posting. Infinite x's and o's, my freaky darlings.


End file.
